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The Madrid-MIT M+Visión Consortium, a partnership of the regional government of Madrid and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was recognized and awarded a 10,000 Euro prize by the Fundación Tecnología y Salud (Foundation for Technology and Health) for its contributions to healthcare technology innovation and economic development in Spain. The foundation is a nonprofit organization formed by the Spanish Federation of Healthcare Technology Companies (Fenin).

Launched in 2011, the M+Visión Consortium brings together faculty and innovators from universities, hospitals, and businesses in Madrid and Boston to run the M+Visión Fellowship and a range of other programs and events. The consortium’s goals are to prepare M+Visión Fellows for biomedical technology innovation leadership, to develop new patient-centric biomedical technologies, and to catalyze change in Madrid’s healthcare innovation ecosystem. The fellows, based in the Research Laboratory of Electronics, design and lead multidisciplinary, translational research projects that show the potential for significant patient-care impact.

“The Madrid-MIT M+Visión Consortium’s activities are leading to patent applications, creating business networks and generating business activity that motivate sustainable economic development and improved health care through new biomedical technologies,” read the statement of the foundation. “These objectives are fully shared by our Foundation.”

The award ceremony was held on the campus of the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid on Nov. 27. “On behalf of the Fundación Tecnología y Salud, it is an honor for me to recognize the M+Visión Consortium,” said Javier Colás, president of Fundación Tecnología y Salud and vice president of Medtronic Spain & Portugal. “In the M+Visión Consortium, there are no limits to innovation. … It inspires and develops talent in biomedical technology innovation through practical experiences, and has created a diverse, open, and collaborative community and a portfolio of assets that strengthen the innovation ecosystem.”

M+Visión Director Martha Gray accepted the award with Luis Sánchez, general director of Fundación para el Conocimiento madri+d, M+Visión’s partner in Madrid. “We are honored to be recognized by the Foundation and by Fenin,” said Gray, who is affiliated with the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST), the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the Research Lab of Electronics, and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. “It reinforces our belief that by engaging all the stakeholders in biomedical technology innovation — researchers, clinicians, businesspeople, and patients themselves — we can make progress that benefits everyone.”

“On behalf of M+Visión, Fundación madri+d, and Comunidad de Madrid, and indeed on behalf of our community which is hundreds strong in Madrid and Boston, I want to thank the Fundación Tecnología y Salud, and Fenin for this award,” said Sánchez. “It is a welcome recognition, since we share a focus on creating and delivering high-impact healthcare innovations.”

In just three years, M+Visión research teams have achieved a very fast pace of IP development, matching even the MIT average, by leveraging the resources and talent of the Boston and Madrid innovation clusters. The core fellowship program has had 34 fellows and involved 135 faculty from 70 institutions and organizations. Its other programs, like IDEA2 Madrid (originally based on the IDEA2 program at HST), have engaged many more emerging biomedical technology innovators and entrepreneurs in Spain. “In all our activities,” said Gray, “we focus on human capital development — preparing people to identify opportunities for real impact and to be innovation leaders.”

The Madrid-MIT M+Visión Consortium is a partnership of leaders in science, medicine, engineering, business, and the public sector dedicated to catalyzing change in Madrid’s healthcare innovation ecosystem. It was founded by Comunidad de Madrid, through Fundación para el Conocimiento madri+d, in 2010, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. La Fundación para el Conocimiento madri+d (or, Madri+d Knowledge Foundation, pronounced “Madri-mas-d”) is a network that connects public and private research and regional associations, integrating academia and industry to improve the competitiveness of the Madrid region.